I ordered you to establish the family status of former officers among command personnel and to inform each of them by signed receipt that treachery or treason will cause the arrest of their families and that, therefore, they are each taking upon themselves responsibility for their families. That order is still in force. Since then there have been a number of cases of treason by former officers, yet not in a single case, as far as I know, has the family of the traitor been arrested, as the registration of former officers has evidently not been carried out at all. Such a negligent approach to so important a matter is totally impermissible.141
Similar reports and orders were sent by Trotsky to other army chiefs. To Kazan he cabled:
11th Division has revealed its utter uselessness. Units are still surrendering without a fight. The root of the evil is in the command staff. Obviously, the [Regional Military Commissar] has concentrated on the combat and technical side and forgotten about the political. I suggest a strict watch be kept on recruited personnel and that command responsibilities be given only to those former officers whose families reside within Soviet borders, and that they be informed by signed receipt that they are responsible for the lives of their families.142
Former officers themselves were also held as hostages, and many would be shot when one of their fellow ex-officers went over to the Whites. Trotsky asked Dzerzhinsky to let him know whether there were ‘still any former officers who had been taken hostage in concentration camps and prisons. If so, where are they and how many?’143 Any method was appropriate, in Trotsky’s view, if it prevented the disintegration of the Red Army. He formulated the hostage policy in an order of 2 November 1919: ‘Families of traitors must be arrested at once. Traitors themselves must be registered in the army’s black book, so that after the imminent and final triumph of the revolution, not a single traitor can escape punishment.’144 In 1920 he ordered that ‘families found guilty of aiding Wrangel will be deported beyond the Baikal’.145
When on 25 October 1918, however, Trotsky proposed at the Central Committee that all officers being held hostage be set free, it was decided that only those ‘who did not belong to the counterrevolution’ would be released. ‘They will be recruited into the Red Army, at which time they will submit the names of their family and be told that the family will be arrested, should they go over to the White Guards.’146 According to Denikin, however, rumours about treason and treachery were exaggerated. In two years, he received reliable information from a former general of the Soviet headquarters staff that only one case of material significance had occurred for certain.
The most difficult category to make fight was the rank and file. Trotsky relied particularly on Communists and commissars, and on the whole his expectations were fulfilled, although not invariably. There were cases when entire units abandoned their positions and fled the field of battle. With Moscow’s approval, Trotsky took the major decision of placing blocking units behind unreliable detachments, with orders to shoot if they retreated without permission. Thus, when Stalin applied this policy in 1941-42, he was merely applying the experience of the civil war under new conditions.
Blocking units appeared for the first time in August 1918 on the eastern front in 1st Army under the command of Tukhachevsky, who was the first to issue orders to shoot. In December 1918 Trotsky ordered the formation of special detachments to serve as blocking units. On 18 December he cabled: ‘How do things stand with the blocking units? As far as I am aware they have not been included in our establishment and it appears they have no personnel. It is absolutely essential that we have at least an embryonic network of blocking units and that we work out a procedure for bringing them up to strength and deploying them.’147
Trotsky was not content to issue general orders, but gave specific instructions on how the new units were to be used. He told Ivanov, chief of the blocking units:
Evidently in many cases blocking units are doing no more than holding individual deserters. In fact the role of the blocking units during an attack must be more active. They must be deployed closely behind our lines and when necessary give a shove to stragglers and the hesitant. As far as possible, blocking units must have at their disposal either a truck with a machine-gun or a light vehicle with a machine-gun, or, finally, some cavalry with machine-guns.148
There were occasions when blocking units were used to restore order in the rear following a panic retreat. On 19 May 1919 Sklyansky reported to Trotsky: ‘Stalin reports: the front is being brought to order, three punitive companies have been sent to Luga, Gatchina and Krasnoe Selo. Zinoviev is going to Luga, Stalin to Staraya Rusa, the scattered 6th Division has been brought together and order is being restored, the divisional commander, who showed cowardice, has been removed.’149
Deserters were to be treated in various ways, according to their behaviour. Trotsky ordered that: ‘Every deserter who turns up at divisional or regimental HQ and declares, “I am a deserter but I swear I shall fight honourably from now on,” is to be forgiven and allowed to fulfil the high duties of a warrior in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Army. A deserter who offers resistance to arrest shall be executed on the spot.’150
Trotsky used every means available to him to strengthen morale: threats, arrests, encouragement, rewards, appeals to class instinct, political education. Once, on reading a routine report on desertions, he dictated a cable to the War Commissariat: ‘I suggest as a punishment for the Army and Navy that black collars be worn by deserters who have been returned to their unit, by soldiers who refuse an order or have committed pillage and so on. Anyone wearing a black collar who is caught committing a second crime shall be doubly punished. Black collars shall be removed only in the event of exemplary behaviour or military valour.’151 This idea was not adopted by the leadership, thus sparing thousands from public shame.
Generally, however, Trotsky’s harsh line on discipline was supported. Typical of the sort of communication he sent to Lenin on this subject was the following:
The cause of the shameful failures on the Voronezh front is the total collapse of 8th Army. The chief blame falls on the commissars who have not brought themselves to use tough measures. Six weeks ago I demanded stern punishment for deserters from the Voronezh front. Nothing was done. Regiments wander from place to place, leaving their positions at will and at the first sign of danger … The field tribunals then went to work. The first executions of deserters took place. The order was announced placing responsibility for harbouring deserters on Soviet deputies, Committees of the Poor and heads of households. The first executions had their effect. I hope a breakthrough will be achieved in a short time. More tough Communists are needed. I’m staying at the Voronezh front until things are in order.152
The tribunals were at work throughout the civil war. An especially large number of executions took place in 1918-19, although 1920 and 1921 were not far behind. According to a participant: ‘The new courts were called tribunals (as in the time of the Great French Revolution). The sentences of these courts could not be appealed. Sentences were not ratified and had to be carried out within twenty-four hours.’153 Of course, many of the victims were genuine enemies of the Soviet Republic, but the overwhelming majority were simple peasants who either had no idea of what was happening or no wish to die for the ‘Commune’.
The total number of those sentenced to death by the military tribunals is not known, but a figure for Russian and Ukrainian executions in 1921 has been compiled from the evidence of cables formulated and signed by the Deputy Chairman of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Tribunal, V. Sorokin, and its director of statistics, M. Strogovich. The figure is 4337,154 but 1921 was a less ‘fruitful’ year than its predecessors.
Although Trotsky was better informed than most about desertion and other shameful events taking place in the army, he reacted with anger when the press wrote about it. On 14 July 1919, over the direct line to Sklyansky, he conveyed his indignation in a memorandum to the Central Committee about articles by various ‘idlers who are
trying to discredit the army’. He was especially incensed by pieces written by Tarasov-Rodionov which had appeared in Izvestiya, and which were ‘a shameful and false slander of the Red Army, depicting the entire command staff as traitors, members of the Revolutionary Military Councils as brainless and incapable of using the Communists, and so on and so on … Tarasov-Rodionov is a dubious Communist.’155
Trotsky reminded the Central Committee that he knew of Tarasov-Rodionov from another era: ‘In June 1917 he was, it seems, a Left SR, and when he was called in for questioning about the events of July he behaved like a coward and renegade and traitor … Later he wormed his way into the Soviet regime,’156 and became a divisional commander. Trotsky was close to the truth about Tarasov-Rodionov’s character: in 1935, when his Left SR past and his pre-revolutionary criticism of Stalin caught up with him, Tarasov-Rodionov wrote to Voroshilov, the Defence Commissar: ‘The Left SR rebellion was a veiled attempt by Trotsky and his followers to seize power from Lenin in order to disrupt the Brest treaty. The Left SRs were used as the skirmishers of the rebellion, but behind them were forces led by Trotsky and his accomplices.’ In other letters, Tarasov-Rodionov repented of his ‘renegade letters of July 1917 concerning the true Bolshevik, Stalin’, managing meanwhile to inform on Kamenev, with whom he was personally acquainted. Despite signing his letters as ‘constantly true to the Party and devoted to you’, his fate had already been sealed.157
The fact that mass executions were taking place at the front was known to many Party members, and it was discussed at the Eighth Party Congress in connection with concern over the arrest of Communists. Trotsky’s response was a lengthy letter to the Central Committee in which he explained the reasons for his position. He argued that nothing the Congress Commission had decreed contradicted the army administration’s policy in practical terms, ‘as it has been carried out up until now with the approval of the Central Committee … Precisely because I have observed at too close quarters difficult, even tragic episodes in the active armies, I know all too well how great the temptation is to replace formal discipline with so-called “comradely” or domestic discipline, but I also know all too well that such a change would signal the total disintegration of the army.’158 He then analyzed the case of a Communist who had been executed on the basis of his representations and a decision of the court, and argued that the serious situation at the front had made it necessary: ‘The army can be held together only by the greatest exertion, supporting discipline from top to bottom by means of the toughest and in many cases harshest regime. The opposition’s slogan is “Loosen the screws!” My point of view is that the screws must be tightened.’ He ended on a tough note: ‘It is important that the centre … not be infected with panic and not fall in with the psychological schemes of the Voroshilovs and Osinskys. Comrade Zinoviev’s report raises serious concern that he is looking for a solution precisely on the path of weakening the regime and adapting to the fatigue of certain elements of our Party. To the extent that the Central Committee bureau has approved Comrade Zinoviev’s report, I would like to think it has not approved this part of the report, for otherwise I would see no chance of the Party’s success in the forthcoming difficult struggle.’159
To achieve a set goal, Trotsky’s usual course of action was to opt for the most extreme measures. In June 1919 he ordered the Revolutionary Military Council of 8th Army: ‘Pride of place must now be given to the work of the tribunal, which must be strongly reinforced. Punishment must follow immediately after the crime. During the cleansing of a wide strip it seems the command staff of the army did not take proper measures to seize from the population the maximum number of carts, nor to mobilize all those capable of bearing arms and to transport them to the rear, in case they became available to the enemy. Circumstances demand that measures of severe military dictatorship be applied.’160
Even when a shortage of uniforms or poor food was at issue, Trotsky invariably explained it in class terms. Reporting to the Central Committee on Ukraine, he wrote: ‘The well-fed kulak, his rifle well-concealed, looks with contempt at the Red Army man, barefoot and hungry, and the [soldier] feels unsure of himself and humiliated. We have to run a hot iron down the spine of the Ukrainian kulaks—that will create a good working environment.’161
They were harsh times. Those who wanted to stifle the revolution were harsh, as were its defenders. Berdyaev rightly observed that ‘truth has ceased to interest both sides’. Harshness was, as it were, programmed by the unswerving Bolshevik aim of installing the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin himself admitted that ‘dictatorship is a harsh word, a difficult, bloody, tormenting word, and such words are not uttered idly’.162 Force was the natural expression of the dictatorship, according to the leader of the revolution. Execution was for him just another way of settling social and political problems. He could, for instance, write that ‘false informers must be prosecuted more sternly and punished by shooting’.163 That Lenin was the chief Jacobin of the revolution was something Maxim Gorky had observed when he wrote in November 1917 that Lenin ‘is talented, he has all the qualities of a “leader”, but also, what is essential for that rôle, an absence of morality and a purely lordly, merciless attitude to the lives of the masses’.164 In the last analysis, it was neither Lenin nor Trotsky who mattered. A doctrine based on the primacy of the dictatorship of the proletariat and class war, if it is adopted as a political programme, will find appropriate leaders, even if those leaders attempt to limit the dictatorship by so-called revolutionary legitimacy.
Presenting Trotsky, therefore, as a resolute advocate of repression at the front does not mean that he was personally lawless, at least in formal terms. He acted within the framework of Bolshevik military policy, ‘with the approval of the Central Committee’ and with the aid of the tribunals. A letter of 6 May 1919 from him to the leadership of 2nd Army demonstrates this:
Respected Comrades: From a conversation with the chief and commissar of 28th Division, I have established that shootings without trial have taken place in 2nd Army. I do not doubt for one minute that the people who were subjected to this punishment deserved it fully. This is guaranteed by the composition of the Revolutionary Military Council. Nevertheless, executions without trial are totally impermissible. Naturally, in a war situation, under fire, commanders and commissars and even other ranks might be compelled to kill a traitor or provocateur on the spot if they had tried to sow disorder in our ranks. But apart from this exceptional situation … executions without trial and without the judgement of a tribunal cannot be permitted at all … I suggest 2nd Army organize a sufficiently competent and energetic tribunal with circuit sections and also terminate shootings without trial in all divisions.165
This document appeared at a time when lynch law was common in many units, and regarded as normal. Within two months Trotsky published another order, No. 126:
Comrades, Red Army men, commanders, commissars! Let your just anger be directed only against the enemy with a gun in his hand. Be merciful to prisoners, even if they are obvious scoundrels. Among prisoners and refugees there may be many who entered Denikin’s army either from ignorance or under the lash. I order that under no circumstances should prisoners be shot, but should be sent to the rear … All cases of disobedience must be reported and a Revolutionary military tribunal must be sent immediately to the scene of the crime.166
It appears from these documents that Trotsky was trying to contain the rampant harshness and lynch mentality within a framework of martial law.
Anatomy of War
Trotsky’s chief influence on the formation of military policy was felt at the Eighth Party Congress, even though he was not present. He returned to Moscow in early March 1919 partly to deal with a host of problems at the Revolutionary Military Council, but mainly because the Party Congress which was due to take place later that month would discuss, among other things, the military issue. Trotsky intended telling the Central Committee that the army command was planning a major effort to break
the combined forces of the interventionist and White armies in Ukraine, as well as on the Karelia to Rovno sector, during the coming spring. These campaigns were crucial to the defence of the main economic and political centres of the country.
Trotsky intended to give the Congress a detailed picture of the military position and to formulate a series of basic tenets on the building of the Red Army, knowing that there was serious opposition to his views among Party members at the front and in Moscow. He had been made particularly aware of this on 15 February 1919 when he put into action his statute on garrison and sentry duty and the first part of his field manual on war of movement. These documents had been drawn up by former tsarist officers, who naturally took most of their ideas from the practical manuals of the old Russian army, a fact at once noticed by commissars who saw this as an attempt to resurrect ‘the old order’.
That, however, was only half the trouble. Trotsky also learnt that his work as War Commissar was being openly criticized by many well-known Party leaders. On the whole he was unconcerned by such criticism, since he always consulted Lenin and kept him informed. In effect, he had been practising Central Committee policy, whether on the question of recruitment or the struggle against desertion.
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